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Sketch 1: In Manhattan

Title: In Manhattan

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Team Member Names: Haley Meisenholder, Rikhav Shah, Mitchel Myers

Summary: The data says that trees take up a small fraction of land area in Manhattan. We want to tell this story because trees should have an equitable share of space. Further, the addition of more trees to Manhattan could greatly enhance its livability.

For our data, we compare the land area of trees in Manhattan to several other groups: people, cars, parkland, and all of Manhattan. For information on trees, we utilized the NYC tree data set from 2015 available on the City of New York website. This data set contains the chest height diameter of every tree and the borough which allowed us to calculate the land area of all trees in Manhattan. For information on people, we used census data to determine the population of Manhattan. From there, the land area of people was calculated using the assumption that each person takes up roughly 2 square feet. For information on cars, we used data from the New York City Economic Development corporation to determine the approximate number of cars and taxis in Manhattan. From there, we used the dimensions of a standard four-door sedan to estimate the land area of a single car. With this information, we calculated the total land area of cars and taxis in Manhattan. For information on parkland in Manhattan, we used data from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation which provided a precise measure of park land area in Manhattan. For information on the total land area of Manhattan, we used data from the City of New York website.

We believe that our presentation is effective at communicating the un-equitable share of land area that trees possess in Manhattan. This is because the visual presentation: 1) is simple and elegant, 2) is effective for quick comparisons, 3) utilizes recognizable images that allow for rapid recognition of key parties and data sets, 4) utilizes scale to portray the magnitude of the discrepancy between the land area of trees and other groups, 5) is consistent with the symbolism of “tree rings”, 6) uses a slideshow to progress through the data visually. Beyond this, the text and narrative component of the presentation orients the viewer around the specific location in question (Manhattan) and provides the viewer with specific quantitative values for comparisons being made in the visual.